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Evernote: Company of the Year

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Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very curious to hear more about how exactly people are using Evernote in their day-to-day lives. I installed it on my laptop and phone a year or two ago but I could never really figure out a use for it.

Meeting notes, shopping lists, todo lists, whiteboard photographs, names of people I've met at parties so I can remember who they are later, cigars and whiskey I've enjoyed. Every other list maker I've ever tried has suffered from either local storage - it won't be with me after I flash my phone or if I take the idevice to the store instead of the android or if I'm at my computer and left my phone downstairs - or els…

It is an awesome list maker. Almost perfect. The auto syncing and having an app for every device are the killers.

But, as a list maker, why can't I make lists in user defined order? This is one of the most fundamental things a list maker should be able to do. It's so painful it's almost a deal breaker. There is no more natural way to sort things into priority order. I need to be able to switch to different notebooks (and tags, potentially) and immediately see what's most important, but the only way to do that now is clumsy hacks and workarounds. I can't throw stuff in and iterate over it until it's a hunk of polished gold. Instead, I have to come up with a "system" to manage it all. It's frustrating. Dragging things into order is the most low-tech way of prioritizing work. I read recently that low-tech solutions appeal to geeks, so maybe that's why it appeals to me. The fact that you can't drag stuff into order forces you to over-engineer your approach to task management.

For now, I make lists inside notes, but then I lose much of the power that makes evernote useful in the first place.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#32
post #9

A good example of solving a real problem people have, definitely a good approach. I'm an evernote user, I like it, but I see many possibilities for improving UI and features, it's worth trying IMHO.

I'd be very curious to hear more about how exactly people are using Evernote in their day-to-day lives. I installed it on my laptop and phone a year or two ago but I could never really figure out a use for it.

I've stopped filing paper in a filing cabinet. Now I just scan it and throw it out. (I should be shredding it, but haven't gotten around to buying a shredder). This takes strictly less time than filing it by hand, is more enjoyable, and best of all, it's searchable.

Details: I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap sheet fed scanner (loads paper in a hopper like a fax machine) off of Ebay for $100. It has decent Evernote integration, such that I can drop in a sheet of paper, push a button, and have it scan both sides of the sheet of paper directly to Evernote.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#33

I looked at Evernote a couple of times and it just seemed like overkill for my needs. But a couple of months ago I got one of those tiny portable Fujitsu Scansnap duplex scanners and started scanning and shredding every scrap of paper that passes my way. Now I get it.

I wish I could do that, but unfortunately I just can't bring myself to trust their security. I use Evernote for my classes because I use a Asus EeeNote tablet that syncs things to Evernote exclusively, but there are so many things I can't trust in the cloud. If Evernote offered a "host it yourself" option that worked with existing Evernote clients, I'd be all over it.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#34

I looked at Evernote a couple of times and it just seemed like overkill for my needs. But a couple of months ago I got one of those tiny portable Fujitsu Scansnap duplex scanners and started scanning and shredding every scrap of paper that passes my way. Now I get it.

Yep, great concept. You can do this without evernote, and you can do this with apps that do a much better job of allowing you to get stuff out. Evernote did not create the ability to do this. You are very confused.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#35

So Evernote is doing $18M a year on 750K paid users with 20 million free users. It has just turned profitable - company of the year? Let's not forget they've taken nearly $100M of investment at a nearly billion dollar valuation. Perhaps this is my east coast conservatism, but in the average case I just can't see how this works out well for the investors. To get a respectable exit of perhaps $4B in a few years they wo…

> assuming you gave them a generous valuation on 20x revenue and completely neglect profitability. The fact that this is a fashionable valuation tells me everything I need to know about the market.

The interesting thing with these "freemium" companies is that there's generally a long conversion time. For many, it will take a year or more before free users covert. Each is a bit different, but last time I saw, Evernote fit that profile.

So a good way of projecting future performance here is looking at how many free users they have, and what the conversion rate has been in the past (as well as average time to convert). If they've recently picked up a lot of new free users, we should expect a significant bump in paid accounts in about a year (or whatever their average time to convert is). The freemium businesses just have a significantly different business model, and looking at the current paid accounts is often a poor indicator of future profitability. I don't know that their valuation is justified (personally, I think most valuations are high right now), but the fact that they're only "barely" profitable now probably isn't a good indicator of future profitability.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very curious to hear more about how exactly people are using Evernote in their day-to-day lives. I installed it on my laptop and phone a year or two ago but I could never really figure out a use for it.

Meeting notes, shopping lists, todo lists, whiteboard photographs, names of people I've met at parties so I can remember who they are later, cigars and whiskey I've enjoyed. Every other list maker I've ever tried has suffered from either local storage - it won't be with me after I flash my phone or if I take the idevice to the store instead of the android or if I'm at my computer and left my phone downstairs - or els…

"For flights, I store all my itinerary information, and also make a note of the parking location in a special note. Never forget that way. I have a note for all my emergency contact information. I have a notebook for date ideas for my wife and I."

Again, you could do this in simplenote /notational velocity. You're using a sledgehammer to do really simple tasks.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#37

I looked at Evernote a couple of times and it just seemed like overkill for my needs. But a couple of months ago I got one of those tiny portable Fujitsu Scansnap duplex scanners and started scanning and shredding every scrap of paper that passes my way. Now I get it.

I have no idea what options there are for a non-iOS user, but ...

There's an excellent iOS app called TurboScan. It's fantastic. Take a picture of your receipts and it'll convert the image to low file size, but high-quality, PDFs. You can then send those PDFs to your Evernote email and have them stored neatly in a notebook.

It's a fantastic solution for portable document scanning. And with the iPhone 4s camera being so improved over its predecessors, it makes great PDFs of receipts.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#38

I have to ask, I suppose I could just go try it again, but I'll ask. Has Evernote changed significantly over the last year+ or so? I signed up for Evernote some time ago, and while I enjoyed the concept it was clunky and kind of ugly and I was overall just indifferent to the product. I tried Springpad some time after quitting Evernote and found it to be more fluid and easier to use. So, has there been significant cha…

No, it's still the same. Ugly, slow, and bloated.

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#39

So Evernote is doing $18M a year on 750K paid users with 20 million free users. It has just turned profitable - company of the year? Let's not forget they've taken nearly $100M of investment at a nearly billion dollar valuation. Perhaps this is my east coast conservatism, but in the average case I just can't see how this works out well for the investors. To get a respectable exit of perhaps $4B in a few years they wo…

I think a big part of the "company of the year" bit is because they've done something most people thought wasn't possible-- build a big business charging consumers. It's refreshing! I don't know much about their business, but I'm guessing they are sacrificing a lot of revenue/profit for growth. They could probably double their conversion by slowly dialing down the awesomeness of the free version in favor of the paid…

Here's the comment (from a new user):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3330038

Re: Evernote: Company of the Year

#40
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Evernote primarily makes money by paying customers" How exactly is this business model profitable for them?

FROM paying customers he meant, vs ad-supported free customers

Okay.

If Evernote had found a way to make money by paying customers, I would think they would indeed be very deserving of the title, "Company of the year."

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